AN: Thanks to jsq and threesquares for beta work.
Part 3: Exhaustion
In the morning, agents searched the man's apartment.
His real name was Garrett Wolf, and the woman, according to the FBI, was Andrea Pesovic. We didn't know much about her yet. But we had the guy's possessions, and a lot of possible leads: a calendar, address book, receipts and photos. Wolf seemed to be an unethical jack-of-all-trades. His records listed jobs ranging from trash collector to martial arts teacher, with some online scams thrown in along the way.
His place looked like he'd left in a hurry, taking a computer and anything else that might lead us to Pelant. Agents brought me some shredded documents they'd found, and I got to work reconstructing them. (After I took a nap, though. I'd gotten maybe two hours of sleep on the living room couch, and Brennan hadn't gotten any more.)
The Bureau was checking out the suspects' friends and family, while trying to recreate Pelant's moves. But I didn't think it mattered how he'd gotten into the country, or where the kidnappers had come from. It only mattered where they went. Where they were now, with Christine.
I doubted the shredded papers would be worth anything either. Wouldn't Pelant have given his recruits explicit instructions? No cyber trail, no paper trail.
Still, I plunged ahead with the projects. My day consisted of juggling: trying to decide which leads were most promising, and pursuing them the hardest. After a few hours, I'd go see Michael at day care. Then lunch, though I felt too sick to eat. Next, check on Booth and Brennan, and head back to my computer.
Caroline appeared in the lab in the middle of that second day. She swept in like a warship, saying, "I will get you any and all warrants. I will pressure people with any legal leverage that you need. I will..." She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and just about started sobbing. "Abducting that precious child! What is this world coming to?" Wiping her eyes, she glanced at Booth on my couch. "Just let me at him. I will take your gun and I will shoot that Christopher Pelant, if I can even see straight to do it."
She wanted to hug everyone, then. Booth and I let her; Brennan didn't. She'd just come in from her own office and Caroline greeted her, "Cherie, I am so sorry. We're going to get this little weasel once and for all, you'll see."
Brennan stiffened and pulled away as the prosecutor reached for her. "If you're hugging everyone, you must think it's unlikely Christine is safe. It's been almost twenty-four hours, and that timeframe gives the abductors plenty of time to—"
"Bones, don't say stuff like that! Don't even think it."
"I agree with him." Caroline was aghast. "That's not what I meant at all."
Brennan closed her eyes for a second. Then she made her voice expressionless, the way I knew she did when she was hurting the most. "Thank you for coming," she told Caroline. "We might need your help." She turned to me. "What have you found in the last hour?"
-.-.-.
Over the next two days, I saw Booth push himself to exhaustion. And I saw Bren's heart break into more and more pieces, to watch him do it.
He traveled between the lab and the Bureau, making endless phone calls. He contacted other agents or informants; he searched official databases; he limped around to issue orders, receive updates and demand information. All of this on crutches, with a brace on his leg, when he should have been at home dozing blissfully under a fog of medication.
Once, when I returned to my office where he was stationed, I heard him talking on his cell. The person on the other line must have been slow or uninterested, because he said, "I've tried to be patient with you, but clearly that's not going to cut it. My child has been kidnapped. What part of that don't you understand? Her life is on the line here, and there's not one single thing I can do about it."
The clerk must have apologized and scrambled to get the information. Booth jotted some things on a pad, said savagely, "thank you," and hung up. Then he saw me in the doorway. Sighing, he ran a hand over his face. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize. What do you have?"
"The woman, Pesovic, we've got her library records. She was there regularly, on these dates" (he showed me his notes), "to use the public computers. We're getting access to her account, to see the books she checked out and hopefully whatever she was doing online."
-.-.-.
Brennan pushed herself just as hard. She accompanied Booth to the Bureau, or stalked tirelessly around the lab, keeping tabs on what everyone was doing.
She felt helpless, I knew. Booth, at least, could have a hand in directing the search. Other agents deferred to him, reporting frequently, and jumping to do what he said.
Brennan, though, had nothing. No bones to examine, no tests to run. I gave her as many tasks as I could, to help me. Her quick, analytical mind made things go faster, but computers weren't her field.
She did have some science to turn to. At the suspect's apartment, we'd taken every possible bit of evidence we could find. Right now, Hodgins was analyzing shoes and clothes for particulates, with Brennan breathing down his neck at every step. He'd found nothing remarkable yet.
The rest of her energy, Bren poured into caring for Booth. She made sure he ate, drank and took medication at regular intervals. When he agreed to rest she sat by him, putting ice on his injured shin after he'd been moving around too much, or doing gentle tissue massage to promote healing.
As much as he would let her, anyway.
It was early afternoon, in my office. I was working on the shredded documents. Some looked like emails, maybe between Pelant and his minions, but I had a long way to go to reconstruct them. Once I did, we still had to decide if they were legitimate, or else some false trail Pelant had laid for us.
Booth was on hold with someone at the FBI, hoping for an update. He and Brennan sat on my couch with the phone between them. I listened with one ear, but focused mainly on my screen. The computer had completed one part of the process; now I had to re-organize the pieces it had already matched and initiate the next stage of the pattern-recognition program.
While waiting for the agent to come back on the line, Bren had started water heating in my little electric pot. She was offering Booth different tea blends, listing their tastes and health benefits. I thought his responses had been getting more gruff—both to her and his colleague—but then he lost it and snapped at her.
"For God's sake, Bones, it doesn't matter what type of tea I have, when our daughter is missing!"
I heard her take a sharp breath as she stood up from the couch.
"Damn it." Booth put his hands over his face. It looked like he was trying to get hold of himself, or maybe he was afraid to see her reaction.
She didn't storm out, didn't say anything; merely watched him. I thought I saw a tear slip down her cheek (just one, mind you) before she brushed it away.
"I'm sorry." He dropped his hands and reached out to her. "I'm sorry, Bones. Come here. Please." She sat down next to him and he pulled her close, kissing her hair. "I'll have whatever kind of tea you think is best, okay?"
A voice came from the phone resting on the coffee table. "Agent Booth?"
"Yeah, I'm here. Go ahead."
"We've got all the data from the female perp's library account. You wanted us to send it to Ms. Montenegro?"
"That's right." Booth turned to me. "You ready?"
"Give me one second." I saved and closed what I'd been working on. "Okay." As my computer linked with the Bureau, I checked the encryption and connection strength, then watched the colored bar of the download window. "I've got it. I'll get to work right away."
While Booth dutifully drank his tea, I spent some time on phone with the Bureau's tech people, deciding how we should divide up the workload. But, as I told Brennan and Booth, it shouldn't take long to see what we were dealing with.
-.-.-.
It was early evening when I finally left my computer. I'd been so engrossed in work that I'd lost track of my friends, but I soon found Booth in Brennan's office. He was napping on her couch, while she sat next to him on the floor. I nearly walked in and woke him, but stopped myself in time. Brennan didn't see me either, so I hovered in the doorway (something I seemed to be doing a lot lately).
He lay on his back with his head turned toward her. She sat still, watching him sleep. One of her hands rested on his arm, and the other touched his face. She was stroking his brow and cheek, over the healing bruises from the car accident. Gently, so gently. And the look on her face—pained, attentive, loving—made me feel I was interrupting something far more intimate.
I backed away, my eyes tearing up.
Maybe I was a coward, too. I didn't want to watch Brennan contemplate what she had to lose.
But I understood what she was doing: Booth was the one person she could help. She could lessen his pain, at least the physical kind. She'd come so close to losing him this week, in one violent blow. They'd almost lost each other too many times, before they were even a couple. Because of their risky jobs and their own emotional stubbornness.
Now, at least, Brennan had Booth safe and in front of her. Even if—
I realized I'd stumbled back to my office, and had to grab the doorframe before I could finish the thought.
Even if the worst happened, and we didn't get Christine back, they would still have each other. Surely they could get through such a loss, together. I didn't want to consider any other possibility.
But I should take a hint from their bravery. Bren tried to control what little she could control, while preparing herself for possible outcomes. Booth pushed relentlessly ahead, refusing to acknowledge anything but a happy ending: Christine would be safe, and Pelant would be punished once and for all.
I got a Kleenex from my desk and blew my nose. I downed some cookies and caffeinated tea for energy. Then I got back on the phone with the Bureau. We'd found encrypted emails buried in the woman's account, and even if it took hours, we were going to crack them.
